47 O ver the past decade, social auditing has taken on an important new role in the monitoring of labour and environmental standards. It has grown rapidly in recent years, involving various companies, con- sulting firms, labour unions and non-gov- ernmental organizations (NGOs) in indus- tries such as forestry, agriculture, clothing and footwear, and textiles. The combined pressure of campaigns by trade unions and NGOs, negative media attention and an increasingly vocal public concern about working conditions have prompted some companies to have their factories audited. Concern about the credibility of such audits has been a major issue in the public debate about corporate social responsibility. Recent research has begun to consider the methodologies and effectiveness of social auditing initiatives. 1 This article offers an analysis of audit methodologies and their coverage of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. It will examine six initiatives: Fair Labour Association (FLA), Social Accountability International (SAI), Social Accountability in Sustain- able Agriculture (SASA), Insan Hitawas- ana Sejahtera’s (IHS) 1999 Reebok audit, the auditing activities of the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP), and the ILO’s Cambodia Project. It will concentrate on their efforts to audit freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. The article will an- swer the following question: is it possible, given current auditing methods, to audit successfully a production facility’s compli- ance with freedom of association? It will be shown that auditing methods are under- developed with respect to these rights and freedoms, and need significant improve- ment and reconceptualization before offer- ing a sufficient level of assurance. Three notes of caution should be sounded. First, the field of social audit- ing is very dynamic and fast-paced. Even as they were writing this article, the au- thors were constantly trying to keep up to date with new and diverse activities of the different organizations described. Second, many organizations keep their methodologies confidential, and although the authors had access to some of these documents, they have specifically avoided using them. It can be argued that this re- sults in unfair treatment of some of the initiatives. However, the initiatives under review all make public statements about the company’s compliance with freedom of association and collective bargaining. Thus, it is not inappropriate to evaluate only the methods they have made public, as these are what they ask the public to place their faith in. Third, freedom of as- sociation and the right to collective bar- gaining are vast subjects and treatment of the entirety of the standards in a short text Social auditing, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining Many of the emerging methods of assessing companies’ compliance with basic labour rights have their limitations. Ironically, the group that is best capable of monitoring practices at the workplace is the one that these standards seek to protect: workers and their trade unions. Philip Hunter Michael Urminsky Multinational Enterprises Programme ILO